Trap shooting machines in the shooting area are normally hand loaded with targets by a boy in the trap arm pit well protected and located some twenty-five feet in advance of the trap shooters. Upon the flinger arm of the trap machine being loaded, the referee calls fire and by a switch in his hand triggers the trap machine to fling the targets into the target area for the shooter to hit and blow apart. The difficulty today is to find boys eagerly available and at a reasonable wage to man the pits and hand load these trap shooting machines. The job of this boy is to merely remain in the trap arm pit and physically place one or two targets upon the trap machine flinger arm preparatory to the triggering of the trap machine by the referee for the next shooting.
These trap shooting machines include a flinger arm and a tension spring that is stressed by electric motor-operated mechanism and released to effect sudden and forceful rotation of the loaded flinger arm to heave or fling the targets into the forward target area. The Winchester-Western trap shooting machine is the one machine most commonly found in skeet shooting areas and will throw or fling clay targets of regular trap quality to a height of some eight to fifteen feet at ten yards from the trap arm pit and that fall some fifty yards therefrom. The trap machine may be adjusted to different vertical variations so that the targets may reach various heights.
The clay targets are composed of asphalt pitch and ground lime and are strong enough to be heaved out by the machine at high rates of speed and yet fragile enough to break when hit by the shooter's No. 9 pellets at thirty or forty yards from the shooter. These targets are domed and of inverted dish shape and can be stacked one within the other. They have a diameter of 41/4 inches, total height of 1 1/16 inches and weigh 31/2 ounces.
Automatic clay target feeders for trap machines have been provided to replace the boy in the trap pit and have been available in the form of a single dispenser of the clay targets onto the flinger arm but no automatic loader has heretofore been provided for automatically dispensing and locating two clay targets upon the flinger arm preparatory to the shooting and in an arrangement that can selectively by a throw of a switch have either two targets placed upon the flinger arm of the trap machine or but one target placed thereon.